The Silent and the Damned aka The Vanished Hands

can say.' 'It doesn't differ from his usual handwriting in any way?'

'I'm not an expert, Juez,' said Vazquez. 'It doesn't seem to have been written with a trembling hand, but it is not exactly fluid either. It seems careful rather than dashed off.'

'It's not what I would call a suicide note,' said Falcon. 'What would you call it, Inspector Jefe?' asked Vazquez.

'An enigma. Something that's demanding to be investigated.'

'Interesting,' said Calderon.

'Is it?' said Vazquez. 'We are always given the impression that detective work is very exciting. This…?'

'If you were a murderer you would normally not want to have your work investigated,' said Falcon. 'You would hope to get away with it. You told me earlier that you thought this crime scene looked like a suicide. A killer with a motive would usually try to give that notion authority with a straightforward suicide note and not with something that makes the investigating team think: What's this all about?'

'Unless he was a madman,' said Vazquez. 'One of those serial killers laying down a challenge.'

'Well, first of all, there's no challenge. A half-note in Sr Vega's handwriting is not what I would call a psychotic attempt to communicate. It's too oblique. Secondly, the crime scene does not contain any of the qualities we associate with a psychopathic killer. They are the sort of people who think about body placement for instance. They introduce elements of their obsessions into the picture. They show that they have been here, that an intricate mind has been at work. There's nothing casual about a serial killer's montage. A bottle of drain cleaner is not left where it fell. Everything has importance.'

'So what normal person would kill a man and his wife and want to have it investigated?' asked Vazquez.

'A murderer who had good reason to hate Sr Vega and wanted him to be revealed for the man he was,' said Falcon. 'As you may know, murder inquiries are very intrusive processes. To find the motive we have to conduct a post mortem, not just on the body but on the victim's life. We have to go into everything – business, social, public, private and as personal as we can get. Perhaps Sr Vega himself…'

'But, Inspector Jefe, you can never get inside a man's head, can you?' said Sr Vazquez.

'The other possibility is that Sr Vega himself is trying to communicate with us. By balling this note in his fist he may be telling us to investigate the crime.'

'You didn't let me finish,' said Vazquez. 'The one thing my job has taught me is the three voices of man: the public one to address the world, the private one he keeps for his family and friends, and the most troubling one of all – the voice inside his own head. The one he uses to talk to himself. • Successful people like Sr Vega have very powerful inner voices and something I've noticed about that kind of person… he never lets anybody have access to it – not his parents, not his wife, not his first-born child.'

'That's not the point -' said Falcon.

'The point is that we get insights,' said Calderon, cutting in. 'A man's actions, the way he behaves with people… different people, it all tells us something about him.'

'In my experience, they tell you what he wants you to think,' said Vazquez. 'Let me show you something about Sr Vega and you give me your insight. Can we walk across this kitchen floor yet?'

Felipe and Jorge were brought in to check and clear a corridor across the kitchen floor. Falcon gave Vazquez a pair of latex gloves. They crossed the kitchen to a door on the other side which opened on to a room whose three walls were made up of floor-to-ceiling stainless steel fridges. Hanging on the clear wall was an impressive array of knives, choppers and saws. The white tiles of the floor were pristine and gave off the faint smell of a pine detergent. In the middle of the room was a wooden table with a top thirty centimetres thick. Its bleached surface was a crosshatching of cuts and notches with a declivity in the middle, its edge furred from constant use. Falcon felt a strange sense of dread looking at that table.

'And this is where he keeps the bodies, is it, Sr Vazquez?' asked Calderon.

'Look in the fridges and freezers,' said the lawyer. 'They're full of bodies.'

Calderon opened a fridge door. Inside was a half- carcass of beef with hooves removed. The visible meat was a deep, dark red, almost black in parts where it wasn't pearled with membrane or covered in thick, creamy yellow fat. The fridges on either side contained several lambs and a pink pig. The latter's head had been removed and hung on a hook, ears stiff, eyes closed with long white lashes making it look at restful sleep. The other doors opened on to freezers with cuts of frozen meat packaged and stored in baskets or just thrown into the dark frosty depths.

'What do you make of that?' asked Vazquez.

'He wasn't a vegetarian,' said Calderon.

'He enjoyed butchering his own meat,' said Falcon. 'Where did he get it from?'

'From specialized farms up in the Sierra de Aracena,' said Vazquez. 'He didn't think there was a single butcher in Seville who had the first idea about handling meat, neither hanging it nor cutting it up.'

'Does that mean he used to be a butcher?' asked Falcon. 'Do you know when and where that was?'

'All I know is that his father used to be a butcher before he was killed.'

'Before he was killed? What does that mean? He was murdered or -?'

'That was the expression he used to describe the death of his parents. 'They were killed.' He never offered an explanation and I didn't ask for one.'

'How old was Sr Vega?'

'Fifty-eight years old.'

'So, born in 1944… five years after the Civil War ended. They didn't die in wartime,' said Falcon. 'You don't know when they were killed?'

'Is this relevant, Inspector Jefe?' asked Vazquez.

'We're building a picture of the victim's life. It would have had a significant effect on Sr Vega's mental state if, say, they died in a car accident when he was still a boy. If they were murdered, that would be something else altogether. That leaves unanswered questions and, especially if there was no retribution, it could breed a determination, not necessarily to find out why, which could be beyond his capabilities, but to prove something to himself. To find out who he was in this world.'

'My God, Inspector Jefe, 'said Vazquez, 'perhaps it's your own experience that's made you so eloquent on the matter but I'm sorry I can't help you with that kind of information. I'm sure there are records…'

'How long have you known him?' asked Calderon.

'Since 1983.'

'Was that here… in Seville?'

'He wanted to buy a plot of land. It was his first project.'

'And what had he been doing before that?' asked Falcon. 'Butchery doesn't buy you very much land.'

'I didn't ask him. He was my first client. I was twenty-eight years old. I didn't want to do or ask anything that might lose me the work.'

'So his background didn't bother you – the possibility that he might rip you off?' asked Falcon. 'How did you meet?'

'He came in off the street one day. You probably don't know this about business, Inspector Jefe, but you have to take risks. If you want to be sure about everything you don't set up your own practice… you work for the State.'

'Did he have an accent?' asked Falcon, ignoring the slight.

'He spoke in Andaluz, but it didn't sound as if he was born to it. He'd been abroad. I know he spoke American English, for instance.'

'You didn't question him about any of that?' asked Falcon. 'I mean, over lunch or a beer, not in an interrogation room.'

'Look, Inspector Jefe, I just wanted the man's business. I didn't want to marry him.'

The Medico Forense put his head round the door to say he was going upstairs to look at Sra Vega's body. Calderon went with him.

'Was Sr Vega married when you first met him?' asked Falcon.

'No,' said Vazquez. 'There were no divorce proceedings, although I think he produced a death certificate of a previous spouse. You'll have to ask Lucia's parents.'